The present invention relates to an arrangement whereby advertising meters are located at statistically selected sites in order to meter access to, and use of, advertising communicated to the sites over a communication medium such as the Internet.
The Internet has proven to be an efficient and popular mechanism for the dissemination of information from content providers to content recipients. Content providers in many cases are organizations, such as businesses, governmental agencies, educational institutions, and the like, who operate Web sites where such organizations provide information that can be downloaded by content recipients. The content recipients are often consumers who use computers usually located in their dwellings to access the content provided by content providers. However, content recipients may also be other businesses, governmental agencies, educational institutions, and the like. In many cases, a content provider is also a content recipient.
The information provided by content providers to content recipients often includes advertisements in which organizations advertise their goods and/or services. This information is typically provided directly by a Web site to content recipients. Additional information concerning such advertisements is frequently provided at another Web site and is accessed by way of click-through URLS.
The operators of Web sites offering advertisements to content recipients, as well as those who create and place advertisements as offerings by Web sites, have an interest in the success of such advertisements. Success is typically measured by the amount of interest that advertisements generate. While exposure to an advertisement is typically determined, in terms of the Internet, by the number of hits on particular advertising offerings, interest is determined by clicks on click-throughs. Web site owners, and those who create and place advertisements, may then draw market relevant conclusions from the amount of interest exhibited in their advertisements.
Several arrangements have been proposed in order to measure this exposure and/or interest. For example, it is known for a Web site to itself measure the exposure in the content which it offers by determining the number of hits on its content offerings. However, such a measurement provides little information about interest in the advertisements and other information accessible through the click-throughs in the its content. Moreover, this exposure is localized in that its measurement provides little information about exposure to, and/or interest in, content offered by other Web sites, such as competitive Web sites.
Therefore, it has also been proposed to install software meters on the computers of panelists so that the interest of the panelists can be measured and extrapolated over the population as a whole, in much the same way that TV ratings are generated. According to this proposal, the software meters track operating system messages in order to detect communications of interest. These software meters are arranged to log the titles of windows which are displayed to a computer user on the video display unit of a computer because Internet content, as well as application software interfaces, are provided to the user in a window format. However, logging titles of windows is not particularly useful because such titles can be very generic. For example, one such title which is popular with many content providers is simply xe2x80x9cHome Page.xe2x80x9d This title provides little indication of the information provided to the content recipient.
Tagging of Internet content has been broadly suggested in the context of requiring widespread industry cooperation. However, it is unlikely that such widespread industry cooperation is attainable. Also, such broadly suggested tagging has not been particularly helpful because of the problems that could arise from indiscriminate tagging. For example, inserting a tag in a field or in a sub-object of content requires a decoder which is able to interpret the code that contains the tag. This requirement means that the decoder resident on a panelist""s computer must be altered in a manner to detect the tag. Such an alteration is intrusive and many content recipients may, therefore, refuse to permit their equipment to be modified in such an intrusive way.
The present invention is directed to an arrangement for tracking advertisements which solves one or more of the problems noted above.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a computer readable storage medium has program code stored thereon. The program code, when executed by a computer, performs the following tasks: a) detecting a tag in an advertising banner contained in a message communicated to the computer over an external communication link; b) logging the tag; and c) communicating the tag to a remote facility.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a system comprises a plurality of meters and a remote central facility. Each meter operates on a computer at a statistically selected site, and each meter (i) detects a tag from click-through URLs contained in messages electronically communicated to the computer from remote content suppliers over a communication link, and (ii) communicates the tag to the remote central facility.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, a storage medium has program code stored thereon. The program code, when executed by a data processor, performs the following tasks: a) detecting a tag contained in a click-through URL of an Internet message communicated to the data processor over an external communication link; and b) storing the tag in a log.